Some friends get a nice new car or go on an expensive vacation. They post pictures of the car and of their vacation on Facebook for all to see. But what you don’t know is that maybe that new car comes with a $500 a month car payment or that they had to save up for three years to afford that vacation.
…
The point is that we simply don’t have all the information to accurately assess someone’s financial situation by only looking at their spending. So, what happens is that by using an incomplete picture of someone else’s situation, and then comparing it to our own is that our situation can look pretty bad. Our friends are living it up while we’re sticking to a budget, so we assume they must be doing a lot better than we are. This may or may not be true; there is just no way of knowing.
…
The point is that we simply don’t have all the information to accurately assess someone’s financial situation by only looking at their spending. So, what happens is that by using an incomplete picture of someone else’s situation, and then comparing it to our own is that our situation can look pretty bad. Our friends are living it up while we’re sticking to a budget, so we assume they must be doing a lot better than we are. This may or may not be true; there is just no way of knowing.
This is important to remember.
(via bitsofjess)
this is true about so much more than finances, too
a little bird* constantly reminds me that when i compare my life to others’, i am comparing what i know about myself internally AND externally to how someone else ONLY APPEARS EXTERNALLY, and therefore i’m comparing 100% of my knowledge of myself to about 1% of my knowledge of them
i call it the facebook phenomenon and it is stupid
(via asweetbeginning)
This is so poignant. We might also not know that quite a bit of our generation is still getting bankrolled by their parents. No, seriously. It’s still happening.
(via 5tickyheels)
thisthisthisthisthisthis
(via reallykatie)
